I wrote this during what became the fading months of my fascination with the Zoetrope Studios (See this note thingy) web site. There were one or two people who were confessedly misrepresenting themselves, one for very professional reasons, one just because of insecurity, and a fair number of people acting far more important than they really were. (I, of course, could never be accused of that myself.) Then Christina Reese showed back up.

Christina had been a regular on Zoetrope, posting some saccharine, loved-and-lost,- gee-I-thought-he-was-the-one, shallow Romantic crap. Earlier in the year, someone claiming to be Christina's sister made several urgent postings on some of the other member's "offices" claiming that Christina had been in a catastrophic snow mobile accident, irrevocably damaging her hands, would be in therapy for at least six weeks, & might never write again. Several of the members bought it, & sent messages of condolence & encouragement. There then followed several posting's from "Christina's sister," supposedly earlier works by Christina, some purporting to be the sister's work, all of them pretty bad. About a month later came a poem, apparently by Christina herself, without having been dictated to her sister from her death bed. She must have forgotten she had therapy that day.

I was almost smug about having spotted her immediately, but I was contrite enough not to do anything about it. Christina was a dog, but there wasn't any point in trumpeting the fact, since it might make those who bought her act wholesale-- and there were alot of those-- embarassed, to say the least.

Months later, after Christina had showed back up again, with no explanation, nor any mention, of the terrible snow mobile mishap, and shortly after corresponding with one of the other imposters (one with good enough reason to conceal himself), an old New Yorker cartoon popped into my head (little suprise as my Dad is inordinately fond of quoting it any time the subject of the internet comes up), with two dogs sitting at a computer, one saying "On the internet, no one knows you're a dog." It helped that I was listing to disc 1 of the Crosby, Stills & Nash boxed set, and if you don't immediately get that then (a)don't worry about it, because it's a pretty damned obscure reference, & 2.don't worry about it, since the only overt sign of it is the line "I mean very free and easy," which is from "Wooden Ships." It just popped into my head: Christina Reese is a dog; she is not who she says she is. She never broke her hands. She just pulled that crap on the outside chance that she might make us find her crappy poetry more poingant. So there are references in there to people I knew (sort of) through Zoetrope, poems they'd written, discussions on Phenomenology & the internet with Doc Nagel, Pink Floyd lyrics, REM lyrics, Pop Culture references of all sorts, & so on & so on & so on. I really threw in everything but the kitchen sink. Sprinkled in here & there are nods to the really great things about the internet: being able to communicate, however expansively or in depth or briefly or glossily, with almost anyone you want around the globe, be they tawdry brass beings or philosophers with rolled gold souls. (Doc Nagel still wants to know what this poem has to do with pretzels.) Initially, the punchline was the same as the title, which really worked. I changed it up a bit after some reflection; some of the Zoetropers hadn't liked that, thought it gave too much away. I dunno. I may change it back eventually.

I'd like to say that I quit Zoetrope after I wrote this, but it simply isn't the case.

Right after September 11th-- and I mean right after, on September 12th-- this guy showed up on the chat room feature set up by the people at the Journal of Mundane Behavior, Mundane Talk-- MT for short-- calling himself Larry Drummond. He had never posted a message before, & he was posting these ultra-right-wing, kill-'em-all-let-God-sort-'em-out, gung-ho horse shit. I concluded immediately that this was a fake, a cypher, someone trolling for a chat room to spread Heritage Foundation propaganda-- in short, a dog. I got into the habit of deleting his messages sight unseen, or reading just enough of them to confirm that he was still spouting the same bilious propaganda (crap which is nothing new, but which, coming as it did hard on the heels of the attacks of September 11th, absolutely stank), but some of the other MT'ers (as we tended to refer to each other) got seriously offended, saying so in their postings. Eventually I would take a moment to try to calm the waters if I could: Larry's a dog, don't worry about him, ignore him and he'll go away, and if he doesn't at least you can take pleasure in ignoring him. (For me, the most insulting bit was where he insisted that he was a member of the Special Forces, using an assumed name so his CO wouldn't gig him for giving away secrets of the Government Plan To Kill All Muslims.) Eventually, almost predictable, Larry Drummond morphed into Bob Lee. They claimed to be separate people, Bob Lee claiming to be dialing in from Larry's IP address since he was a friend of Larry's & just happened to stumble across the MT site while he was using the computer as he was house sitting for Larry, Larry dialing in shortly after Bob's explanation (2nd or 3rd post, after other members had already accused Bob of being Larry in disguise) to confirm that Bob was house sitting, & also to say that it was no coincidence that they shared alot of the same views as Bob was Larry's protege & they were both in the same branch of the Special Forces, yada, yada, yada, blah blah, woof woof. Eventually, one of the MT'ers had had enough. He created a bogus e-mail account, set up to look like it was Larry Drummond's, & sent out a bogus message purporting to be Larry's latest correspondence where he was undergoing treatment for, as near as I could tell, pedophilia & autoeroticism in conjunction with heavy drug use.

At this point, the administrator for the chat room decided that enough was enough. Several members had been chastised already, including Larry, & several had complained, including Larry, & the bogus posting was the last straw. They shut down the listbot. About a dozen or so of the folks still correspond, en masse, & I occasionally join in. And that's mainly a function of the way the thing went down: suddenly, one of our own turned into a dog. And the jerk that started the whole mess, whom I still maintain is a dog, got the whole thing shut down in the blink of a damned eye. Talk about feeling betrayed.

Which brings up one of the things I hate about the internet: somehow it magnifies petty crap to the point that it actuallly looks like it might be imporant. Why? Because: on the internet, no one knows you're a dog.

On a recent weekend, while working with my Dad in the basement of my folks' house (my Dad makes wine), he mentioned that the cartoon in question was not a Far Side, by Gary Larson, but a Non Sequitur, written by that other guy who is not Gary Larson. Pardon me, but I have to go chase my tail now.